Hidden Gold, Wilder Anthony [best fiction books to read TXT] 📗

forehead with his handkerchief. There was nothing to do but follow the girl's advice, and that quickly, he knew. After all, in the face of death, financial ruin seemed a mere bagatelle.

"So far as I have been informed, Wade is confined at Coyote Springs, somewhere in the mountains," he said bluntly. "That's all I know of the matter. I hope you will find him all right there. He ought to be very proud of you."

Dorothy caught her hands to her breast in a little gesture of exultation, and the expression on her face was a wonderful thing to see.

"You'll go?"

"In the morning," Senator Rexhill answered.

Eager as Dorothy was to reach the big pine with her message, she could not leave without giving Helen such a glance of triumph as made her wince.

Then, hurrying to her pony, she rode rapidly out of town into the black night which cloaked the trail leading to the pine. She knew that her mother would miss her and be anxious, but the minutes were too precious now to be wasted even on her mother. She did not know what peril Gordon might be in, and her first duty was to him. She was almost wild with anxiety lest the courier should not be at his post, but he was there when she dashed up to the pine.

"Take me to Mr. Trowbridge. Quick!" she panted.

"He's somewhere between Bald Knob and Hatchet Hill," the man explained, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "It's some dark, too, miss, for ridin' in this country. Can't you wait until morning?"

"I can't wait one second. I have found out where Mr. Wade is, and I mean to be with you all when you find him."

"You have, eh?" The man, who was one of Trowbridge's punchers, swung into his saddle. "That bein' so, we'd get there if this here night was liquid coal."

CHAPTER XVIII A RESCUE AND A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE

At the end of an hour, or so, the lion withdrew and Wade thought he had seen the last of it. He began to pace up and down the fissure once more, for now that his thin shirt was damp with perspiration, set flowing by the nervous strain he had been under, he began to get chilly again. He had just begun to warm up, when he heard the animal returning. He crouched back against the cavern wall, but the lion had evidently lost the zest for such impossible prey. It walked about and sniffed at the edges of the fissure for some minutes; then it sneaked off into the timber with a cat-like whimper.

The exhausted ranchman kept his feet as long as he could, but when the first rays of the morning sun cast purple shadows into the depths of the hole, he could no longer keep awake. With his hands, he drifted the loose sand about him, as travelers do when exposed to a snow-blizzard, and slept until Goat Neale aroused him, in broad daylight. The Texan performed this service by deftly dropping a small stone upon the sleeping man's face.

"I just stepped over to inquire what you-all'd like for breakfast this mornin'," he said with a grin. "Not that it matters much, 'cause the dumb-waiter down to where you be ain't waitin' to-day, but it's manners, kinder, to ask."

Wade looked up at him grimly, but said nothing. Just awake as he was, his healthy stomach clamored for food, but since none would be given him, he knew that he might as well try to be patient.

"Mebbe you'd like to step over to our hotel an' take your meals, eh?" The Texan went on, after a short pause. "I've got a pot of coffee bilin' an' a mess o' bacon fryin'. No?" He grinned sardonically. "How'd you like me to give you some o' this here cabareet stuff, while you're waitin'? I ain't no great shucks as a entertainer, but I'll do what I can. Mebbe, you'd like to know how I happened to catch you that clump on the head yesterday. Huh?

"I was up in the low branches of a thick pine, where you was moseyin' along. You was that busy watchin' the ground, you never thought to raise them eyes o' yourn. I just reached down and lammed you good with a piece of stick, an' here you be, safe an' sound as a beetle in a log. Here you'll stay, too, likely, on-less you get some sense, and I don't know when that there dumbwaiter'll get to runnin'. It's a shame, too, if you ask me, 'cause a man needs his three or four squares a day in this here climate."

"How much do you want to give me a hand out of here, Neale?" the cattleman demanded abruptly, tired of listening to the fellow's monotonous drawl; and after all the chance was worth taking.

The eyes of the Texan glittered.

"Got the money on you?"

"You'd get the money all right."

"Sure, son, I know that—if you had it! I'd just hold my gun on you, an' you'd toss the roll up here, without puttin' me to the trouble o' givin' you no hand." He chuckled in appreciation of his own humor. "But I know you ain't got it on you—we frisked you down yonder in the timber—an' I don't deal in no promises. This here is a cash game. If I thought tha...."

He whirled about suddenly, looking behind him and seemed to listen for an instant; then his hand dropped to the gun at his hip. He never drew the weapon, however, for with a horrible facial grimace, as his body contorted under the impact of a bullet, he threw his arms into the air and reeled over the edge of the hole. A second afterward the report of a rifle came to Wade's ears.

"Hello!" the rancher shouted, springing from under the Texan's falling body. The instant it struck the sand, Wade snatched Neale's revolver from its holster and waited for him to try to rise; but he did not move. A bloody froth stained his lips, while a heavier stain on his shirt, just under the heart, told where the bullet had struck. The man was dead.

"Hello! Hello!" Wade shouted repeatedly, and discharged the revolver into the sand. He realized that, although a friend must have fired the rifle, there was nothing to show where he was. "Hello!"

"Hello!" The hail was answered by the newcomer, who, thus guided, approached the spot until his voice was near at hand. "Hello!"

"Hello! Come on!" The prisoner threw his hat up out of the hole. "Here I am!"

The next moment Bill Santry, with tears streaming down his weather-beaten cheeks, was bending over the edge of the fissure with down-stretched hands. Beneath his self-control the old man was soft-hearted as a woman, and in his delight he now made no attempt to restrain himself.

"Thank Gawd for this minute!" he exclaimed. "Give me your hands, boy. I can just reach 'em if I stretch a little an' you jump." Wade did so and was drawn up out of the hole. "Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" the old fellow kept exclaiming, patting his employer on the back. "Didn't hurt you much, did they?"

Before Wade could answer, a patter of hoofs caused him to turn, as Dorothy slipped from Gypsy's bare back and ran toward him. She stumbled when she had almost reached him, and he caught her in his arms.

"Are you all right? Oh, your head! It's hurt—see, the blood?" She clung to him and searched his face with her eyes, while he tried to soothe her.

"It's nothing, just a bad bruise, but how—?" He checked the question upon his lips. "We mustn't stay here. Moran may have...."

"There ain't nobody here. I wish to Gawd he was here. I'd...." Santry's face was twisted with rage. "'Course," he added, "I knew it was him, so'd Lem Trowbridge. But we come right smack through their camp, and there was nobody there. This here skunk that I plugged, he must be the only one. I got him, I reckon."

"Yes," Wade answered simply, as he watched three men from the Trowbridge ranch ride up to them. "Where's Lem?"

Dorothy explained that she had set out to find him in company with the man she had met at the big pine; but on the way they had met Santry and the three cowboys. One of the men had then ridden on to Bald Knob after Trowbridge, while the rest had come straight to Coyote Springs. She tried to speak quietly, but she could not keep the song of happiness out of her voice, or the love out of her eyes.

"Then you did this, too?" Wade wrung her hands and looked at her proudly. "But how—I don't understand?"

"I'll tell you, when we're in the saddle," she said shyly. "There's so much to tell."

"Santry!" The ranch owner threw his arm fondly across the shoulders of his foreman. "You, too, and Lem. I've got all my friends to thank. Say, dig a grave for this fellow, Neale. There was a lion around here last night, and I'd hate to have him get Neale, bad as he was. Then—" His voice became crisp with determination. "Hunt up Trowbridge and ask him to pass the word for everybody to meet at the ranch, as soon as possible. There's going to be open war here in the valley from now on." He turned again to Dorothy. "Dorothy, I'm going to take you right on home with me."

"Oh, but...." The gleam in his eyes made her pause. She was too glad to have found him safe, besides, to wish to cross him in whatever might be his purpose.

"No buts about it. I'll send for your mother, too, of course. Town won't be any place for either of you until this business is settled. George!" he called to one of the three cowmen, who rode over to him. "I suppose it'll be all right for you to take orders from me?"

"I reckon so."

"I want you to ride into Crawling Water. Get a buckboard there and bring Mrs. Purnell out to my place. Tell her that her daughter is there, and she'll come. Come now, little girl." He caught Dorothy in his arms and lifted her on to Gypsy's back. "All right, boys, and much obliged." He waved the little cavalcade on its way, and swung into the saddle on the extra horse, which Santry had provided.

On the way down through the timber, Dorothy modestly told him of the part she had played, with the help of Lem Trowbridge. He listened with amazement to the story of her generalship, and was relieved to hear that the Rexhills were probably already out of Crawling Water, for that left him a free hand to act against Moran. This time the agent must suffer the penalty of his misdeeds, but greater even than his pleasure at that thought, was Wade's gratitude to Dorothy for all she had done for him. He was filled with a wonderful tenderness for her, which made him see in the play of her facial expression; the shy lowering of her lashes; the color which ebbed and flowed in her cheeks; the free use which she made of her red lips, a greater fascination than she had ever before exerted over him. There, in the fissure, he had expected never to be at her side again, and now that he was so, and knew what she had come to mean to him, the old friendship between them seemed no longer possible; certainly not from his side. He felt, in its place, all the confusion of a lover, anxious to speak and yet struck dumb with clumsiness and the fear, never absent no matter what the degree of encouragement, that his suit might not